Hello Anthony

Thank you for your interest in our plugin.

1. There's no built in option, but I can send you some code one of our customers used to freeze both the first column and the first row.

2. There's a global search, which will look through all columns in the table, and there are filters which will go through only a specified column.

3. Unfortunately, search looks for the data you've entered, so Bryan will not return Brian as well if that's what you were asking.

Hello Anthony

The customer created a fixed header and column using translation of x and y (no absolute or fixed position used), and here's one solution, take a look:

First of all, you gotta set the z-index for each component below:

jQuery("#table td").css({"z-index": "-1", "position": "relative"});  
jQuery("table tr td:first-child").css({'z-index': '1', 'position': 'relative'});
jQuery("table th:first-child").css({ 'z-index':'2','position':'relative'});

Then you gotta add listener on scroll like this:

jQuery('document').scroll(function () {
   scrollBlock();
});

If your table is set to be scrollable, then you might want to add this in as well:

jQuery('.wdtscroll').scroll(function () { scrollBlock();
});

And here's the scrollBlock() part, it is ugly though, but it works for me though. (noted: the numbers work for my theme, if it is not working correctly on yours, then try to adjust the number until it fits.)

function scrollBlock(){
                        var table = document.querySelector('table');
            var top = table.getBoundingClientRect().top;
            top = document.body.className.search('admin') > 0 ? top - 32 : top + 3; // this value can change
            var left = table.getBoundingClientRect().left;
            if(left >= 20){ // before scrolling left (before transforming)
                                if(top >= 0){ // before reaching header bar
                    jQuery("#table_1 thead th").css("transform", "translateY(0px)");
                     translate(jQuery("table th:nth-child(1)"), 0, 0);
                     translate(jQuery("table td:nth-child(1)"), 0, 0);
                                    } else{ // after reaching header bar
                     jQuery("#table_1 thead th").css("transform", "translateY( " + (-top) + "px)");
                     translate(jQuery("table th:nth-child(1)"), 0, -top);
                     translate(jQuery("table td:nth-child(1)"), 0, 0);
                 }
            } else{ // after scrolling left
                                if(top >= 0){
                    jQuery("#table_1 thead th").css("transform", "translateY(0px)");
                    translate(jQuery("table th:nth-child(1)"), -left + 46, 0);
                    translate(jQuery("table td:nth-child(1)"), -left + 46, 0);
                                    } else{
                     jQuery("#table_1 thead th").css("transform", "translateY( " + (-top) + "px)");
                     translate(jQuery("table th:nth-child(1)"), -left + 46, -top);
                     translate(jQuery("table td:nth-child(1)"), -left + 46, 0);
                     }
                }
            }
function translate(element, x, y) {
               var translation = "translate(" + x + "px," + y + "px)"
                element.css({
                        "transform": translation,
                                "-ms-transform": translation,
                                "-webkit-transform": translation,
                                "-o-transform": translation,
                                "-moz-transform": translation,
                });
}

It is kind of messy, you definitely can't copy and paste and expect it to work for you. You need to spend some time to figure it out. 

Please note that this is custom work, and as custom work it is not included in the provided support. For any further assistance like this, you will need to open a ticket in wpDataTables section, not in pre-purchase. Per our policy, this shouldn't be shared in a pre-purchase ticket, so I hope you understand my further limitations about similar questions.

I'm not sure what you mean with the pagination. You can choose how many rows will be displayed on a single page in the Display tab above the table. Don't set it to "all", though, since the table with 80.000 entries will break.

I see, Anthony

I'm sorry, but this is how the plugin works at the moment, and there's no way to change that.

It may be a good suggestion for our developers, so can you please add it as a feature suggestion on this page?

Hey Darren.

I just made that comment public (https://tmsplugins.ticksy.com/ticket/2444465/#comment-12730712), so just scroll down in this ticket, and you'll see how to do it.

The date when this was posted is June 23, 2020.